Surrounded by Poseurs

Immigration and customs was busy at Logan International Airport. Despite the crucial importance the officials played in preventing threats to the United States from entering its borders, they were currently more concerned with keeping the line moving. A tall, thin, olive-skinned man with shoulder-length hair hoped to use this to his advantage. “I can take the next in line,” a middle-aged official with thinning hair announced. The olive-skinned man approached. “Passport?” the official asked. The olive-skinned man dutifully handed it to him, trying to seem natural. The contents of that “passport” would be the first lies of many. “Where are you flying in from?” the official asked. “Moscow, with a connection in Istanbul,” the olive-skinned man answered. This much was true. He knew this answer would prompt a string of additional questions, especially since his passport indicated he was from neither Russia nor the US, but it couldn’t be helped. […]

I sat in the green room of The Rusty Nail, tuning my guitar. I was still playing my guitar, not one of Charlie’s, but ever since I changed its strings after breaking one I could barely tell the difference. It had been two weeks since Charlie returned to the “mortal realm” and we won the Battle of the Bands, and there had been no sign of any “enforcement department” coming back for Charlie. That hadn’t stopped him from preparing, however. Every day we showed up to his house for rehearsal, he’d be practicing manipulating his instruments to use them as weapons, and he’d continue once we left. Once Travis asked Charlie if he and I should have been learning to use the holy weapons as well, since we’d be targeted as his “power source.” Charlie’s answer was “The best way you can learn to use these is by playing them. […]

Click, flash! “Looks great, guys. Congratulations!” the photographer from The Sturlusson Free Press said after taking our photo with the trophy. “Can you believe this, Travis?” I asked excitedly, “We’re even going to be in the newspaper!” “I wouldn’t necessarily call that a good thing,” Charlie said in a low voice. “What do you mean?” I asked, “Look, I know winning a Battle of the Bands might not mean much to you in your 1,500 year history, but it undoubtedly means Travis and I are more brutal, right? Isn’t that what you want?” “I’m not talking about winning the Battle of the Bands,” Charlie replied, “I’m talking about what you just said: the newspaper. Remember all the institutions I told you the insiders controlled?” “You’re not seriously saying there are power-hungry frauds in our lame local paper, are you?” I looked at Charlie in bewilderment, “I’m pretty sure they don’t […]

“Man, you guys were brutal!” Adam belched into my ear as we manually disassembled Charlie’s drum set. Although Charlie could have disassembled it just as fast as he had assembled it on his own, we weren’t about to push our luck. Before our set, Rick had turned his back from the stage for only a few seconds. When he turned back our drummer, whom he had not seen enter the green room, was leaving it and sitting down at a drum set that hadn’t been there moments before. We started our set on time, so he hadn’t complained, but as someone who had probably been working in live music longer than Travis or I had been alive, that was the first time he had seen anything like that. No need for him to see it happen twice in the same night. “Thanks!” I replied, too ecstatic to even take issue […]

“Come on, get off your butts!” Before either Travis or I could react to anything that had just happened, the rashes on our shoulders lit up in the worst agony either of us had experienced. The day I skipped rehearsal felt like a papercut by comparison. “AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!” “Hey Charlie,” one of the intangible metalheads said, “I think your bandmates may have broken your guys’s agreement.” “Ah, crap. I forgot about that,” Charlie muttered, “Well, so have I. No need to punish them for that anymore.” The pain stopped. As Travis and I continued to lay on the ground, doubled over from the pain that had just ended, another intangible metalhead said “Nice going guys, it sounds like someone’s coming.” The intangible metalhead was right. I could hear footsteps coming down the hallway. “Lezz scare this person away!” a metalhead wearing a Kreator t-shirt, ripped jeans, a blue denim vest covered […]

I heard the applause and cheers echoing from The Rusty Nail’s stage. A band called Godhand had just finished playing the last song of their set. Travis and I were hanging out in the cramped green room backstage with our amps and instruments in the loading dock, ready to set up our equipment once they had taken theirs off the stage. “You nervous?” Travis asked me. “N-no,” I stammered, “Are you?” “Yes,” Travis replied indignantly, “And you’re a lia-” Before Travis could finish that thought something strange happened. The first thing I noticed was time slowing down. It wasn’t like when I threw a punch at Jeff. This time it actually felt like the entire world around me, save my mind’s ability to process it, had become slower. Or maybe that was the exact same thing that happened when I threw a punch at Jeff. Either way, the sensation hadn’t […]

“Ah ha ha ha ha!” Thud “Haa! Ha ha ha ha!” Thud “Pffft heh heh heh heh!” “Why are you laughing!?” Jeff shrieked, “I’m beating the crap out of you!” “Yeah,” I replied, still giggling, “But you’re crying while you do it! You’re getting your tears all over me, man. Gross!” “Shut up!” he screamed as he hit me again. It hadn’t taken long for Jeff to knock me on my back, pin my arms with his knees, and wail on me. Strictly speaking, I wasn’t laughing because Jeff was crying. He was crying, but I had started to laugh first. Why was I laughing? I didn’t know. Maybe it was because this was real life, not a movie, and the underdog doesn’t defeat the bully at the end of the story just because the bully is a jerk and deserves it. Maybe it was because despite successfully blackmailing a […]

Travis and I continued to rehearse every day after school in the two weeks leading up to the Battle of the Bands. Travis was begrudgingly compliant at first; he would meet Purple Hair and me in the side lot where she parked every day after class, rehearse with me for a couple hours, then ride back to school with me so Purple Hair could make it look like we had been studying the entire time when my mom picked us up. He would even put on a talkative, friendly persona that friends’ parents loved, telling my mom all about how Purple Hair was helping us study. And making that stuff up on the spot was no easy task, given how attentive my mom was compared to Travis’s parents. Not only did this make the two of us look good overall, it made my mom especially proud of me; every time […]

Travis and I both looked at each as we played the last chord of our song and grinned like idiots. Clap, clap, clap, “Great job guys!” Rick, the organizer of the Battle of the Bands said as he applauded, “Alright, fifteen minutes to unload your stuff before the next band comes on. I’ll shoot you an email by tomorrow with our decision. Thanks for coming!” Purple Hair, trying to sound supportive as we loaded our gear into her car, said “That was some heavy stuff, guys! Very, uh, brutal!…Was it supposed to sound like that?” “Yeah it was!” I replied in excitement, “That was the best we had ever played it so far! And we did it all without that stupid demon meathead!” Travis and I both pumped our fists in the air. “That’s great!” Purple Hair said, sounding genuinely excited for us, “So what are you going to do […]